Ecology in Jurgen Moltmann’s Theology

Ecology in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology

Celia E. Deane-Drummond

Foreword by Richard Bauckham

Ecology in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology

Copyright ©

2016

Celia E. Deane-Drummond. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Preface to New Edition of Ecology in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Footnotes

Part One: Theological Context to Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Doctrine of Creation

Chapter 1: The Development of Contemporary Theologies of Creation in the Cultural Context of the West

Chapter 2: Ecological Themes in Moltmann’s Earlier Theology

Part Two: A Dialogue with Jürgen Moltmann’s God in Creation

Chapter 3: Moltmann’s Ecological Doctrine of God

Chapter 4: Moltmann’s Ecological Anthropology

Part Three: A Critical Assessment of Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Doctrine of Creation and Future Horizons

Chapter 5: A Critical Appreciation of Moltmann’s Ecological Doctrine of Creation

Chapter 6: A Critical Appreciation of Moltmann’s Ecological Doctrine of Creation

Chapter 7: Conclusions

Bibliography

For Sara and Mair

Foreword

Jürgen Moltmann’s ecological theology of creation is of considerable importance, not only because it is one of the most thorough and imaginative attempts to re-think the Christian understanding of creation in the context of the ecological crisis and awareness of our times, but also because it forms an integral part of his comprehensive theological project. His rejection of anthropocentric and hierarchical models of creation in favour of an ecological theology is rooted in the motifs of relationality and interconnectedness that have long characterised his eschatology, christology, pneumatology and trinitarianism. It is one of the merits of Celia Deane-Drummond’s work that she situates Moltmann’s God in Creation in the context of his work as a whole as well as engaging in a detailed analysis and critique of that book in particular. Her work is an important contribution both to the understanding of Moltmann’s theology and the development of green theology. Her own training and experience as a scientist as well as a theologian gives particular value to her critiques of Moltmann’s dialogue with science and his appropriation of scientific categories for theological work. By being both appreciative and critical of his work she is able to assess its contribution to the ongoing task of the greening of theology and to point to directions in which further work in this area must go.

Richard Bauckham

Professor of New Testament Studies,

St Mary’s College,

University of St. Andrews.

June 1997

Preface to New Edition of Ecology in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology

Jürgen Moltmann could arguably be said to be the ‘grandfather’ of contemporary ecotheology. Since his publication of God in Creation, which first appeared in English translation in 1985, the field of ecotheology has continued to mushroom. Many thought that the last quarter of the twentieth century would be the heyday of ecological theologies and that concern with this issue would fade as other pressing social concerns took its place. Lynn White’s accusation that Christianity was in some sense to blame for the ecological crisis¹ close to half a century ago provided a spur for dozens of impassioned responses by ecologically minded biblical scholars, systematic theologians and theological ethicists. But the issue has not faded away with the dawn of a new century, but rather become both more pressing and even more inclusive as feminist scholars, liberation theologians and global bioethicists have started to take issues of ecology and sustainability seriously. Indeed, ecological concern could still be said to be the most important issue of twenty first century, since our generation in the richer nations of the world may be the last to remember what it is like to have excess in terms of common shared resources, biodiversity, health provision and so on.

This book provides in the first instance a commentary on Moltmann’s contribution to the field of ecotheology, and was composed in the early 1990s, when the influence of his book God in Creation was still at its height. At that stage the language used by theologians in speaking about concern for the natural world was ‘green theology’ in alignment with ‘green politics’. That has largely been replaced now by the term ‘ecotheology’ and ‘eco-activism’, though ‘green’ or ‘greening’ is occasionally used. On the whole I have replaced green theology with ecotheology in this edition, as that is more in keeping with how the term is understood in contemporary theology, though the references to ecological theology were in the original. I’ve also kept the impersonal form ‘we’, rather than using the ‘I’ form. Historically the turn away from impersonal language is relatively recent, and at this stage serious scholarship almost always used the ‘we’ form rather than ‘I’. Today I very rarely use the impersonal case, but I have left it in here as it demonstrates the style in which I was trained as a theologian. I have, however, removed any gendered references to God apart from when they are in direct citations. This is not because I have changed in my views, since even when I wrote this book I understood any such references to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Rather, in the present context it seems to put unnecessary barriers in the way of some readers, and I want to avoid that. In this edition I have either incorporated more cumbersome footnotes to the main body of the text, or removed them. The book, I should add, also reflects my own journey as a theologian; when I wrote the book in its original form as a doctoral thesis at Manchester University, I considered myself largely formed in the Protestant tradition, even though I was received into the Roman Catholic church in 1991, just before its completion. Moltmann’s openness to other Christian traditions also opened my eyes in my own journey of faith and scholarship.

Yet now, close to twenty-five years later, it is fitting to release this commentary in a version rather more accessible to student pockets. This book is not simply a commentary on Moltmann’s ecotheology, it also, in a secondary sense, aims to be a systematic work of ecotheology in its own right, by developing a methodological approach to ecotheology that engages more explicitly with the environmental and biological sciences.

Writing commentaries on living scholars is never easy, mostly because the subject who forms the focus of such writing will continue to elaborate their ideas. There are therefore a number of books and articles written by Moltmann that are at tangentially related to this topic and that have appeared since this particular book was first published in 1997. Many of Moltmann’s newer works weave in his recognizable paradigm of hope into an ecological theology, which focuses to a greater or lesser extent on human flourishing as situated in the context of the natural world as a whole. Examples of such works include The Living God and the Fullness of Life (2015)²; Ethics of Hope (2012)³; Sons of Righteousness Arise: God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth (2010)⁴; In the End- The Beginning, the Life of Hope (2004)⁵. In that sense Ecology in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology represents a time capsule of Moltmann’s thought then and is limited in scope by its own original date of publication. Nonetheless, a strong argument can be made that all Moltmann’s subsequent works that do include explicit ecotheological themes, such as his Sons of Righteousness, build on ideas that he first crafted in God in Creation. Further, those who comment on the significance of his work for ecotheology today routinely orientate their discussion in relation to this originating text. ⁶ Given the formative significance of God in Creation, it is crucially important to understand the significance of that work in relation to how it emerged in his own thinking, its basic systematic claims, and its contribution to the literature as a whole.

Over the last half-century or so, the field of ecotheology has also tended to focus so much on the practical issues of ethics that the theological and systematic dimensions of the discussion are pushed into the background. Ernst Conradie, who is one of the leading systematic theologians in the Reformed tradition, led a collaborative international and ecumenical five-year project that aimed to generate an explicit globalized systematic eco-theology. The results of this project were published in 2014 under the title of Christian Faith and the Earth: Current Paths and Emerging Horizons in Ecotheology⁷. Jürgen Moltmann’s work continued to feature strongly in this text, and in this sense has had a remarkable influence on several generations of scholars working in the field.

The present volume aims to situate Moltmann’s ecological work in the broadest context of contemporary theologies of creation. It also analyses the historical development of ecological themes in his own work, arguing that such themes can be traced much further back in his corpus than the particular focused text God in Creation. That work could be viewed as a marking a crescendo in his own seminal thinking in this field. Special attention is given to the twin themes of an ecological doctrine of God alongside his specific ecological anthropology. Both these themes continue to have an enduring significance in the contemporary discussion of ecotheology. The former since understanding new ways of conceiving God is integral to a systematic reconceptualization of how God acts in the natural world, God as Creator. The latter since without an adequate revision of theological anthropology the problems that humanity still perpetuates will remain intact. Moltmann’s work remains a rich, eclectic and dynamic theology that draws to itself those who are open minded in the search for who God is in today’s world. This book aims to be both appreciative and critical in a scholarly fashion, probing those questions in his work where greater clarity or precision might have been helpful, but also showing up the significance of this work in its contribution to the literature.

I am a scholar who identifies with ecotheology as a field in its broadest aims to weave ecological issues into a robust systematic approach to theology. I am also, like Moltmann, conscious of the pressing need to take into account other relevant aspects of biological science, including evolutionary science. I made a conscious decision, though, after writing this particular book that I would not confine myself to secondary scholarship on Moltmann in my own future scholarly endeavors, and even though I am critical of his position on many points, his works continue to inspire and inform my writing to some extent. Paying close attention to his work over a sustained period early on in my career was a richly formative and informative process, and I therefore still owe a debt of gratitude to Jürgen Moltmann and those who advised me along the way, particularly Richard Bauckham, whose own biblical scholarship subsequently included attention to ecological issues⁸. Moltmann’s eclectic, inquiring and ever imaginative effort to grasp the essentials, in a way that is both scholarly and yet relevant for ecclesial settings, has remained influential in how I continue to conduct myself as both a theologian and ethicist. My hope, then, is that this book will inspire those who are also drawn to this great writer and thinker and provide a way into his thought for those who are newly venturing scholars both in ecotheological areas and beyond.

By way of acknowledgement, I would also like to thank Christian Amondson for his generosity in promoting the production of a softback version of this book at Wipf and Stock publishers. The publication of this version of the book was made possible in part by generous support from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA), College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame. I am particularly grateful to ISLA for their support for academic scholarly endeavors that this book represents.

When this book was first released it was dedicated to my parents, Mary Evangeline (Evie) and Anthony John (Tony) Deane-Drummond. Both of them have since passed away in 2002 and 2012. It is fitting, then, that this version of the book be dedicated to my own children, Sara Elisabeth and Mair Clare Drummond-Curtis, who were born in the new millennium in 2000 and 2005 respectively. The future of the planet rests with them and their descendants.

Celia Deane-Drummond

Advent, December 2015

1. White’s article remains one of the most cited in the literature. Lynn White, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science,

145

,

1967

, pp.

1203–1207

.

2. J. Moltmann, The Living God and the Fullness of Life, translated by Margaret Kohl, Louisville, Westminster, John Knox,

2015

.

3. J. Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, Minneapolis, Fortress,

2012

.

4. J. Moltmann, Sons of Righteousness Arise: God’s Future for Humanity and the Earth, translated by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis, Fortress,

2010

.

5. J. Moltmann, In the End, the Beginning: The Life of Hope, translated by Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis, Fortress,

2004

.

6. See, for example, Ernst Conradie, ed., Creation and Salvation. Volume

2

. A Companion on Recent Theological Movements. Studies in Religion and Environment

6

, Berlin: LIT Verlag,

2012

.

7. Ernst Conradie, Sigurd Bergmann, Celia Deane-Drummond and Denis Edwards, eds., Christian Faith and the Earth: Current Paths and Emerging Horizons in Ecotheology, London, Bloomsbury/T & T Clark,

2014

.

8. Richard Bauckham, The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation, Waco, Baylor University Press,

2010

.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Richard Bauckham for his persistent encouragement and help throughout the period of study. Also I would like to thank Dr. Tim Bradshaw who jointly supervised this work in its early stages, and who made many constructive critical comments. I am also grateful to my friends Joyce and Patrick Thorn, Sally Davies and Eva Emmanuel, all of whom offered their expertise in German language to help with the more difficult translations. I would also like to thank Edwin Mellen Press for agreeing to publish this work and Iona Williams for helpful comments. Finally I would like to thank Helen Hughes for proofreading.

July 1997

Abbreviations

BP Die Bibel und das Patriachat.

CC The Cosmic Community.

CG The Crucified God.

CJF Creating a Just Future.

CPS The Church in the Power of the Spirit.

ECPN The Ecological Crisis: Peace with Nature.

EG Experiences of God.

EH The Experiment Hope.

FC The Future of Creation.

FH The Future of Hope, F. Herzog, ed.

GC God in Creation.

HG Humanity in God, with E. Moltmann-Wendel.

HP Hope and Planning.

HR, HN Human Rights: The Rights of Nature.

M Man.

OC The Open Church.

OHD On Human Dignity.

PL The Passion for Life.

PP The Power of the Powerless.

RRF Religion, Revolution and the Future.

SBH Schöpfung, Bund und Herrlichkeit.

TH Theology of Hope.

TJ Theology and Joy.

TKG The Trinity and the Kingdom of God.

TT Theology Today.

WJC The Way of Jesus Christ.

Footnotes

All books and articles are by Jürgen Moltmann unless stated otherwise. Translations are from the German text.

PART 1

Theological Context to Jürgen Moltmann’s Ecological Doctrine of Creation

1

The Development of Contemporary Theologies of Creation in the Cultural Context of the West

1. Introduction

The rise in popularity and status of green issues must be one of the most rapid changes that we have faced in our particular cultural history in the Western world. The Friends of the Earth, founded in 1973, formed part of the largely middle class counter-culture to the prevailing modernist trend towards economic growth and technology. It is ironical, perhaps, that scientists have shown that even when we treat the environment as a resource within a market economy the crisis is so deep that green issues have been forced into the center of politics.¹ A further irony is that a cultural shift towards a more pessimistic attitude to science and technology has given the Green movement public acceptance that would have been impossible even twenty years ago. Tim Beaumont points to the broadening that we find in today’s politics from a narrower environmentalism to a wider ecological concern.² The latter includes interdependence between peoples, as well as environmental issues which serve to combine questions to do with global ecology with both nuclear issues and related questions of justice and peace.³, ⁴

Once we move into global questions the underlying factors are so complex that science no longer has the power to say anything sensible even within biological boundaries. Jonathan Schell comments:

What is always missing from the results is the totality of the ecosphere, with its endless pathways of cause and effect, linking the biochemistry of the humblest alga and global chemical and dynamic balances into an indivisible whole. This whole is a mechanism itself, indeed it may be regarded as a single living being.⁵

He believes that our activity has become a menace to both history and biology, with a loss of both whole ecosystems and individual species and now the possible specter of human extinction, the death of death.⁶ The nuclear issue as well as the wider ecological one raises important theological questions as well as narrowly ethical ones. We need to ask ourselves if our concept of God is adequate to meet the challenge that we now understand ourselves as having the power of self-annihilation.⁷

The presupposition of the ecological movement with its stress on interdependence is that we have become alienated from our natural environment. Jürgen Moltmann, who has a passionate concern for issues of justice and peace, alienation and oppression, is now, quite understandably, attempting to incorporate more explicit ecological issues into his eschatological theology.⁸ While a number of theologians have recognized the need for a theology that takes account of recent ecological concerns, the difficulty for Protestant theology is that it has largely focused on history rather than nature since the Enlightenment.⁹

The terms history and nature have ambiguous meanings. History can mean all that happened in the past, the records of these events, human responsibility or humankind’s action and the results of this action. We are using the term in the present context to mean The totality of human events in past, present and future, as governed by God and directed towards his goal.¹⁰ The word nature has had historically a plurality of meanings and has at least fifteen meanings today. We will use Gordon Kaufman’s definition of nature understood in terms of both the totality of processes and the context within which human activity takes place; in other words the raw material which human history transforms into culture.¹¹

Kaufman believes that a historical focus to theology began prior to the Enlightenment, and is in fact endemic to the Biblical texts themselves where Israel asserted a belief in the God of history, compared with the gods of nature propagated by the pagan Canaanite cultures.¹² While it is true that Biblical theology in the Protestant tradition has focused on salvation history in the twentieth century, Paul Santmire rejects Kaufman’s thesis that the Judao-Christian tradition necessarily excludes nature as a proper basis for theology.¹³ Peter Selby argues that our culture favours a biological self-understanding rather than a historical one.¹⁴ Hence the focus of mainstream Protestant theology on history actually alienates theology from popular thought. More liberal Protestant theologians have reacted against this trend by pressing for an immanent God who is the liberator of nature.¹⁵ The idea of immanence and liberation are not incompatible because of a novel dipolar theism introduced by process theologian Charles Hartshorne.¹⁶ This is a modified version of panentheism where God is seen to contain the world.

Process theology rejects the idea that we can trace an ecological motif back to the roots of our faith. Jerry Robbins, commenting on Santmire’s exposition of traditional Christianity, claims that The very thin nature-affirming trajectory he traces displays the ecological bankruptcy of orthodox Western theology, rather than its utility.¹⁷ Yet it is fair to say that the lack of interest in history shown by the theologians of Alfred North Whitehead’s school may make them insensitive to the message of the classics.¹⁸ David Tracy points out that we need to indwell a classic in order to allow it to affect us in the present.¹⁹ The appeal of a religious classic is less the violent appeal of authoritarianism than the non-violent appeal to our minds, heart, imaginations and through them to our will.²⁰ He adds:

What ultimately counts is the emergence of an analogical imagination for all those thinkers, secular and religious alike, who cannot accept either the brittleness of self-righteous ideologies masking some universal monism or the privatized sloth of an all too easy pluralism masking either a decorous defeatism or some equivocal rootlessness.²¹

We need what Johannes Metz has called a productive non-contemporaneity, which sheds light on our present concerns.²² Kathryn Tanner suggests that a modern interpretive framework skews traditional claims about God and the world so that Christian discourse becomes incoherent in the hands of those theologians who intend to remain faithful to the traditional claims in reformulating them for a contemporary audience.²³ Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians have accused each other of philosophical seduction of Christian purity.²⁴ She argues that we need to see modernity itself as conditioned by our own age, and at the same time view pre-modern theology as neither innocent or privileged. We agree with her thesis, which bears some resemblance to David Tracy’s notion that a classic can challenge our preconceived ideas. Her approach is more analytical in that she believes we need to search for principles that regulate the construction of theological statements regardless of vocabulary or metaphysical frameworks.²⁵

A trend in our more recent cultural history is that we are beginning to appreciate the value of classics especially in art and architecture.²⁶ Langdon Gilkey finds that our modern understanding of history is becoming less dependent on empirical data and more sensitive to the value of tradition.²⁷ He also foresees a potential retreat into authoritarianism as a response to our prevailing sense of insecurity and instability.²⁸ As much of the latter fear is bound up with a pending ecological crisis, this underlies the need for theology to take into account developments in an understanding of both nature and history. Some Biblical scholars have already recognized the need to begin to face up to biological and ecological issues, and move away from narrowly historical questions.²⁹, ³⁰ A key question that we hope to address in this Chapter is to analyse ways in which theological reflection on the doctrine of creation has responded in the ecological climate of our contemporary culture, and in the prevailing uncertainty that the threat of ecological collapse generates. We will focus our attention more closely on Protestant theology, asking in particular two core questions:

1. How has our understanding of God as creator been affected?

2. What is the relationship between ourselves and the natural world, as expressed in the relative significance of nature and history?

We will give a broader preview of the historical changes in cultural attitudes to nature as a way of tracing the build-up to our current ambiguous relationship with nature in terms of both alienation and ecological concern. We aim to set the contemporary theological scene within this broader context, as a way of marking points of continuity and discontinuity with past tradition. We have drawn on those theologies that have been most influential in shaping the background to Jürgen Moltmann’s own position, hence we will mention the approach of two key reformers, John Calvin and Martin Luther, in the context of the changing attitudes to nature in the early modern period.

As a way of providing a background to the biological critique which will characterize our subsequent discussion, we will outline the changing climate in our attitude to nature as influenced by the rise in experimental science in the nineteenth century, giving particular mention to Charles Darwin. We find in parallel with these changes an increasing awareness of historical consciousness. The reaction against the parallel emergence of theology rooted in history was championed by Karl Barth who sought to swim against the stream of popular liberal Protestantism of his time by affirming once again the traditional basis for Christian theology rooted in faith in God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Overall, however, a potential weakness of his theology is that he never really took seriously enough the influence of the power and force of science in shaping our understanding of the world. Here we draw on three Roman Catholic theologians, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner and Hans Küng, as examples of those who have made great efforts in this direction.

Nonetheless these positions have not really taken adequate account of the ecological pressure of contemporary culture, and here we give examples of theologians adopting process and/or feminist frameworks for their positions. In the final section we will look at the Eastern Orthodox contribution to the present debate. The latter is particularly significant amongst theologians sensitive to the increased sense of urgency for theology to be ecumenical, and insofar as this underlines the need for Christian theology to be holistic, rather than partisan, reminds us that even traditional theological reflection today has become ‘ecological’. By this we mean that theology is aware of its interconnectedness and inter-relationship with other positions, in a way that would have been difficult to imagine at the time of the reformers. It also leads into our discussion of the emergence of Jürgen Moltmann’s ecological doctrine of creation as found in his earlier works, and which will form the substance of the next Chapter.

2. Changing attitudes to nature in the early modern period.

(a) Martin Luther and John Calvin.

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was inclined to view the natural creation as a concatenation of hostile energies, and under a curse following the fall of humanity. The wrath of God expresses itself in the evil that we see in the universe, which has a way of becoming a kind of existential springboard for grace.³¹ The radical separation of nature and grace in Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms tended towards a depreciation of the material world. This aspect contrasts with Thomas Aquinas’ more synthetic approach towards the realms of nature and grace. However, other aspects of Luther’s theology were more affirming in their treatment of the natural world. He does insist, for example, that before the fall of humankind the creation was attractive and good.³²

While all of nature possesses a miraculous quality and as such presents us with a mask of God, he posits an anthropocentric view, similar in some respects to that of Aquinas, so that humankind through its intellect soars high above the earth. In this instance he rejects strongly Plato’s idea that reason is given to the non-human creation.³³ The ideal state before the fall was such that humankind has no need to employ cunning or skill in its dominion over the animals.³⁴ We find a positive appreciation of the future redemption of all creatures in his commentary on Psalm 8.³⁵ Yet the overriding focus in Luther’s theology is an insistence on the primacy of our justification by faith, which tends to push considerations about the created realm of nature to the periphery of his thought.

John Calvin (1509–1564) understood all knowledge of God to come from scripture. He portrays God as one whose will rules over inner and outer historical events, rather than the eternal source of being. The rule of God over the external life finds expression in his doctrine of providence, while the rule of God over our inner life finds expression in his doctrine of election.³⁶ This emphasis on salvation history leads to a more dynamic view of history and helps to overcome the more static view of God as one who upholds the principle of order. Our freedom lies in our willing acceptance of what is ordained by God such that all that we achieve is by an experience of sola gratia.³⁷ The natural creation becomes the theater for God’s glory and shows us the awesome beauty of the creator.³⁸ Nonetheless Calvin encourages us to reach out for an active transformation of the world in a way that weakens the more contemplative strands in his thought. In a similar fashion to Martin Luther, we find that for Calvin creation and nature tend to become pushed into the background by his overriding concern for soteriological issues.

(b) The cultural renaissance in the idea of nature.

Even while Calvin was still alive in 1554, Gomez Pereira put forward the view that animals were not so much creatures of God but machines or automata, while humans differed in that they had a mind or soul. René Descartes (1596–1650) popularized this view, which was widely accepted according to Keith Thomas because it gave a Christian rationalization for the harsh treatment of animals. There were a few dissenters to this position; Henry More, for example, described it as a murderous doctrine.³⁹ The increased mechanization of society gave a visible analogy for these writers. One of its more unfortunate effects was that it served to justify harsh treatment of those people who were on the margins of society, and who were treated little better than animals.⁴⁰ The underlying philosophy of nature in this period marks a development of Aristotelian ideas, and R.G. Collingwood has coined this the renaissance in the idea of nature.⁴¹ The basic premise of the mechanistic view was that laws in nature were imposed from the outside and were subject to the purpose of an intelligent mind. By contrast, according to Greek natural science, the world of nature is saturated by mind, so that nature has both a mind and soul in which individual plants and animals participate.⁴²

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) championed an anthropocentric vision where he perceived all of nature to be at the disposal of humankind. He insisted that scholars left their detached speculations and applied their knowledge to relieve the burdens of life. He believed that the mechanistic view of nature freed Christianity from the pagan belief that deified nature and identified God with creation. Moreover humankind’s mastery over nature in the arts and sciences actually militates against some of the negative consequences of the fall. In a cultural atmosphere that was buoyant from new discoveries and international travel, Bacon viewed Utopia as within our grasp.⁴³ This optimistic vision clouded any sense of corruption in humanity and there was a lack of awareness of the upsurge in population and little sense of the power of potential forces for change.⁴⁴

Keith Thomas suggests that the historical period between 1500 and 1800 was crucial in setting the stage both for the development of an intense interest in the natural world along with doubts about our relationship to it in a way that has left us with our legacy of current anxiety.⁴⁵ Alongside this change in attitude to nature we find the growing development of modern historical consciousness. The static view of history more characteristic of Hellenistic thought was gradually eroded by:

(i) medieval apocalyptic where forms could be changed by divine fiat;

(ii) the criticism of inherited structures by renaissance humanism;

(iii) the challenge of the reformation to inherited medieval ecclesia;

(iv) Calvin’s identification of the work of providence in historical terms;

(v) the use of the scientific method.

Gilkey considers that the rise in experimental science was the most important factor in breaking the Greek concept of changeless forms.⁴⁶ However, we might equally suggest that a change in perception of nature encouraged the emergence of empirical science. While it is difficult in this case to separate cause and effect, it seems likely that the emerging historical consciousness had an important influence on the development of the modern Darwinian view of biology nearly a century later.⁴⁷

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) thoroughly endorsed the mechanical view of nature championed by Descartes and Isaac Newton (1642–1727). He viewed nature as consisting of immutable, hard and dead conglomerations of moving particles.⁴⁸ Nature is the proper object of scientific knowledge and appears to us as regular and predictable, though this is not the thing in itself.⁴⁹ This marks a shift away from the strictly mechanical view where the mechanism itself was perceived as reality. Kant’s rejection of God as the proper object for our scientific study finally severed moral reason from scientific research, but in a way that still gave a value to religion within its own sphere. For Kant, God becomes a necessary postulate that serves our practical reason, and an idea that helps us understand the unity of nature. The difference between humankind and the rest of nature is our freedom, which allows us to transcend nature’s deterministic quality.⁵⁰

Santmire regards Kant’s philosophy as acting like an ecological sieve to the Lutheran and Calvinistic theologies. The soteriological focus of their theology pushed their treatment of nature to the circumference, and the latter was then lost in the post-Kantian era.⁵¹ While this is an attractive suggestion in many respects it is only a partial one since the idea of nature shifted dramatically in the nineteenth century from the mechanical view that had underscored Kantian philosophy. The Darwinian understanding of nature left a double legacy, which we will discuss below, one aspect of which partly contributed to the final separation between science and Christian religion. However, it is true that the Kantian approach provided the philosophical climate in which this could happen.

3. Towards the modern view of nature in the nineteenth century.

The idea of nature characteristic of the modern era is based on an analogy between the processes of the natural world studied by natural scientists and the vicissitudes of human affairs studied by historians.⁵² The emerging historical consciousness that had begun a century earlier was based on central paradigms of process, development and change, and as applied to biology encouraged the belief that new forms could emerge. Thus in the modern view nature is no longer a closed system, and teleology becomes reintroduced.

Hegel (1770–1831) marks the transition period to the modern view of nature. He incorporated the idea of becoming or process into the primary form of logical becoming. This is not a movement in time or space, or a change of mind, but a logical movement that is part of concepts as such.⁵³ Unlike Plato, the system of concepts for Hegel is not static, but subject to growth. The logical becoming in the world of concepts leads to changes in the world of nature. This dynamic organismic view of the world of concepts and nature is linked with Hegel’s view of God. Humankind is significant in that it is the vehicle of the mind, which is the precursor to the being and becoming of the Spirit.⁵⁴ Thus Hegel’s view of mind is in sharp contrast to that of Kant who believed that our mind creates nature, and requires a postulate of God for practical reason. For